


Patron Saint of Imperfections

by maplewoodmoth



Series: Chains Upon Your Children: Obscurial Harry [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, I have found myself incapable of finishing any of my current projects, I have maybe 5 versions of this fic in my documents, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Obscurial Harry Potter, so onto another wip i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:55:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28413507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maplewoodmoth/pseuds/maplewoodmoth
Summary: Premise: Ok, so people become obscurials when they reject magic as a part of themselves as children due to really really bad circumstances, whether they are aware of the magic or not, right.Harry was raised in a house that despised him for something beyond his control. All he knew was his abnormalities would be punished and locked away.And anyways, what was Dumbledore expecting to happen,  when he put a kid with great magical potential- who’s the center of a great prophecy about a "power the dark lord knows not" in an abusive, magic hating home?Or: Harry is an Obscurus
Series: Chains Upon Your Children: Obscurial Harry [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2081037
Comments: 2
Kudos: 119





	Patron Saint of Imperfections

**Author's Note:**

> Here's something that bit my fingers that I couldn't get out of my head for 5 months anyways happy holidays, enjoy.

When Dumbledore hears the prophecy, the whisper of the phrase: "power the dark lord knows not"- instead of a powerful weapon, or the deathly hallows, or blood curses laid by love and desperation, his mind goes to his youth, where the strongest magic he'd ever seen didn't lay in objects or men, but in desperate children with self hatred and magic boiling and churning beneath their skin like a tea kettle full steam, until it exploded out and killed his mother, demolished an entire city, destroyed itself. 

When Harry is dropped off to the Dursley's it's not the thought of blood magic to keep him safe until his 17th birthday, but the thought of a magical creature that could be harnessed as a weapon to protect when the time comes. 

(Albus liked to pretend he was better than Gellert, smarter and cleverer- after. Not willing to go to the same desperate lengths as him, even if it was all for the Greater Good. Albus was so very good at lying to himself, that he almost managed to believe it). 

**

Albus is thinking about possibilities: about sacrifices. Not about how the ends justify the means, he was never so Machiavellian as Gellert. But how the needs of the majority outweigh the happiness of a single individual. 

A weapon is a weapon. And a boy is a boy. 

But what about when the weapon is a boy and the boy is a weapon? Then what? 

Sacrifices are sacrifices, and people are people: there is always a reason behind the action, albeit not very good ones. But to Albus, to the world, he thinks at least, it is a very good reason. 

But these are not reasons to Harry: these aren’t factors to be considered. This is just his life: a little boy raised and abused by a family that doesn’t love him. There is just cruelty and abuse, and a circular cycle that continues- of punishment for strangeness and strangeness due to punishment. 

There is just Harry, and his life. There is just Harry and his differences. There is just Harry, and he is alone. 

**

There are lots of things that Harry knows: he is 6 years old; he has green eyes that he hates and a cool scar that he doesn’t, and he is a Freak. 

These are facts about himself, facts of life that he can state like saying he has 5 fingers on each hand, and 5 toes on each foot. Like how orange juice tastes better than apple juice (not that he really gets a chance to have either). Like saying that there is something wrong with him that makes him unloveable. These are facts that he knows and can recite if anyone asks him (but no one asks him). 

He wants to be better, be perfect, be someone worthy of love, of being noticed. 

Over time though, he learns that sometimes it’s better to not be noticed, not be claimed, not be anyone- they can’t punish you if they don’t notice you, if you’re nobody (he still hasn’t figured out that being nobody makes it easier for them to get away with it). 

The Dursleys, they don’t care, but they care too much of what he represents/what he stands for (what, Harry will think much later, did I represent at 6 years old, as not much of anything, that they are so afraid of? Later he will know it is magic, but as a child, he just aches and twists and regrets that he is in the shape of something unlovable. 

Shapes, he will soon find out, are malleable. Much, he finds, like reality.) 

But for the moment, there are some truths he will never be able to shed, and being a freak is one of them. 

**

  
He lives and he changes and he grows, but there is and will always be a darkness in his bones, a crackling in his soul, a hunger for change that he can’t seem to shake.  


**

There is no power, only responsibility. 

There is no love, no hate, just indifference and stagnancy. 

There is change. There is no change. There is no change. He _is_ change. He is the stillness that comes from lack of change. Harry is the calm before the storm; he _is_ the storm. He’s Harry. He’s just Harry, He’s _just_ Harry. 

Why won’t they see/why won’t they change? 

(What are prophecies? What are inevitabilities? What is anything, anymore, but a collection of words. Things only have the power that we give them. Maybe that is why, Harry thinks, that he is broken, that he is a freak, that he is darkness and breaking and shadow and smoke and destruction. Maybe, he ponders, that is why he is nobody and nothing at all.) 

Gods, Harry wishes. He wishes for so many things that he loses count. 

But he wishes, still he wishes. To have the ability of change, to have the ability to escape. It tumbles and rumbles in his bones, an unhappy and grinning thing- teeth bared. 

He’ll escape. He just has to bide his time. 

**

It happens, as most things do, on an unassuming sunny day- bright and beautiful and all the things that Harry does not feel that he is. 

Harry has run away. He’s in a clearing in the deep deep woods, the birds quiet around him and the wildlife silent. He is curled up, body aching and eyes smarting with tears from being too slow to duck Aunt Petunia’s frying pan after failing to cook the eggs to perfection. 

His bones ache and his muscles cramp and he feels tumultuous and unfair and so full of vibrant energy and frustration that he feels that he could burst out of his skin. 

Harry is eight and around him, reality begins to unravel. 

Around him, everything gets fuzzy and then blindingly, brilliantly clear. He crystallizes. He freezes; he expands and shatters. 

The colors of the forest around him bleed together like a disaster of an oil painting, like someone throwing water on wet paper- it crumples and bends, warped in the heat that does not seem to exist in the moment. 

Harry breaks. 

**

  
When he pieces reality together again, there is a crater where the forest had once been, and he is miles away from where he was. He is no longer curled up, and for a moment as he gazes down at his little eight-year old fingers, could swear that black smoke curls up, familiar and friendly between his fingers, beneath his wobbling gaze.  


**

The news will proclaim it an unforeseen disaster- a build up of natural gases that an unfortunate errant spark from the hot day led to an explosion and destruction of the woods. 

Harry says nothing, and quietly resolves to forget this, because it’s a coincidence, it has to be a coincidence. 

He will walk home and say nothing for the next month, and nobody will notice, even when the usual unexpected things that have a tendency to follow him cease for the moment. 

After all, there’s always going to be something else for them to punish him for. 

But Harry notices. He notices that for the first time in months, days, if not years, the hum of his bones is quiet, while in contrast, his head is buzzing. 

This time, he thinks, it will be a while for it to stop. 


End file.
